Apocalypse Now? Billionaires Stockpiling Land in Case of Epic Crash

A who's-who of the alarmist set, and how they're preparing for 'the end.'

Back in March, RCL created a checklist in case of the apocalypse—and our conclusion, to paraphrase R.E.M., was you’d feel fine, if it were the end of the world.

But apparently, many in the billionaire set aren’t taking any chances. As Forbesnow notes, “many of the richest families have been grabbing up massive amounts of farmland around the world. All property far away from coastal areas and in locations conducive to self-survival, farming, and coal mining.”

Per the report, billionaires like Ted Turner have amassed serious acreage—two million acres, to be exact, in Montana, Nebraska, New Mexico, and North Dakota. Amazon’s Jeff Bezos has 400,000 acres in Texas to his name. John Malone has the most of the billionaire set, with 2.2 million acres spread over Wyoming and Colorado.

And it’s not just U.S. billionaires, who are doing this. According to Forbes, billionaires in Australia and New Zealand are doing the same thing with their country’s farmland.

Forbes’ Jim Dobson goes as far to map where the safest places on Earth will be in the event of an apocalypse—and how the land masses will change in the event of, say, an asteroid colliding with Earth. (Review Dobson’s map.)

The upshot? There aren’t many safe spaces in the world in the event of a global cataclysm.